Alan Caruba's blog is a daily look at events, personalities, and issues from an independent point of view. Copyright, Alan Caruba, 2015. With attribution, posts may be shared. A permission request is welcome. Email acaruba@aol.com.

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

A Real Agenda for the GOP Congress

By Alan
Caruba

Clearly
President Obama did not get the message the voters sent in the November midterm
elections, electing enough Republican Senators to shift power in the Senate and
to increase it in the House. Many Presidents in their second term encounter
this shift, particularly if they are seen by the voters to be incompetent in
some respect.

Writing in
the December 9 edition of National Review, Henry Olsen, reminded readers that ‘wave
elections” do not guarantee victories to come. “In each previous case—1946,
1994, 2010—a Democrat held the White House and Republicans thought the wave
presaged his subsequent defeat. Each time, however, the Democrat won reelection
relatively easily.” The GOP can only give thanks Obama cannot run in 2016, but
no one should count out Hillary Clinton at this point.

Shortly
after the November 4 elections Obama told the nation he heard those who voted,
but also those who did not. What Obama heard, however, was that he should
rewrite immigration laws. Investigative reporter Jerome R. Corsi, writing in
World Net Daily, says no executive order has been issued, but rather that the
Department of Homeland Security has been told to issue work permits and avoid
deportations of illegal aliens.

One might
have thought that the GOP got the message in 2012 from those Republicans who
stayed home and thereby let Obama remain in office. Apparently politicians only
hear what they want to. The polls indicate that Americans do not like ObamaCare
and want it repealed, and that they do not want Obama’s unconstitutional
amnesty actions acted upon.

On
Wednesday, December 3, House and Senate Republicans, supported by the Tea
Party, joined with grassroots activists to denounce Obama’s unilateral amnesty
efforts. Among those participating in the TheTeaParty.net event were Senator Ted
Cruz, Representatives Steve King, Michele Bachman, Louis Gohmert, Tim
Huelskamp, and Curt Clawson. Also participating was Niger Innis, Executive
Director of TheTeaParty.net.

As
reported by the Tea Party News Network, the problem is “many moderates appear
to be going soft on the issue” of illegal immigration “as Speaker of the House
John Boehner works to try and avoid a government showdown between Democrats and
Republicans.”

The reported compromise is a budget bill that funds the
government through to September 2015, but the Department of Homeland Security
only through March to permit the new Congress to take some action on the amnesty
issue.

Innis
noted that the Tea Party has 2.5 million members and warned “If the Republican
leadership tacitly colludes with the President, then they will have betrayed
the voters who elected them and will pay the price at the ballot box. It’s
shocking that Republicans would even contemplate preemptive surrender before
the new Congress even convenes.”

Realistically,
however, House Speaker Boehner cannot order Republican Representatives to vote
as the Tea Party would prefer. Voters tend to assume that there is party unity
among the House Republicans, but in reality they vote their own political
interest and those range from liberal to conservative. It is, however, worth
remembering that not one Republican in Congress voted for Obamacare.

On
December 3, The Daily Caller’s White House correspondent, Neil Munro, reported
that he had heard that “House Speaker John Boehner will ask Rep. Nancy Pelosi
to help him overcome ‘snowballing’ GOP opposition to the GOP leadership’s draft
2015 government budget bill” which would fund the entire government for 2015”
and “makes merely token efforts to stop President Obama’s agencies from
implementing his unpopular amnesty, according to rank-and-file GOP
legislators.”

On the day
after the November 4 midterm elections, The Washington Post, reported that “This
will be the most dominant Republican Congress since 1929, with an
almost-certain 8 percent majority in the Senate and an 11.7 to 17.7 percent
majority in the House. That trumps the party's 6.3/13.3 percent majorities in
the 80th Congress that began in 1947.”

Dominant in numbers, but is the GOP
leadership acting hesitantly regarding either amnesty issues or the repeal of
ObamaCare? It’s more like they are acting pragmatically, realistically. They
know that Obama would veto such legislation. Symbolic votes are not useful.
Practical politics that accomplish real goals is.

I believe
that Congressional Republicans have decided to let the courts deal with the
issue of Obama’s unconstitutional over-reach. On December 3, CNS News reported
that “A coalition of seventeen states have joined together to file a suit
against the Obama administration.” The states are mostly southern and
Midwestern. In addition, law suits opposing ObamaCare are also making their way
through the courts.

One cannot
blame the voters for being angry and impatient.

On
November 25, Rasmussen Reports said of its latest survey regarding
Congress, “Even though they just voted for a new Republican majority,
voters still give Congress dismal marks and the majority believes members get
re-elected because the system is rigged.” The survey found that “just eight
percent (8%) of likely U.S. voters rate Congress’s performance as good or
excellent. Sixty-four percent (64%) rate their performance as poor, also in
line with earlier surveys.”

As the new
GOP-controlled Congress takes over in January, Republicans should hope that it
will begin to simplify the tax code, cut spending, reduce the huge national
debt, aid the growth of the energy sector, and crack down on rogue agencies. That
would be a good start toward electing a Republican President in 2016.

1 comment:

The bottom line is, the system is broken (as should have been obvious by the way Obamacare was made law, and by the continuous stream of blatant lies from Obama, delivered with pathological ease and indifference to any sense of reality the public may have). As a scientist, I have been most concerned, in the last 5 years, with the similar situation in climate science (and its horrific political mutation, like a bad science fiction movie), and what I have said there goes for the political situation as well--I have shown there is no valid climate science (so the system is broken there too) and IT CANNOT BE FIXED FROM WITHIN THE SUPPOSED WORKING SYSTEM, BY CLIMATE SCIENTISTS THEMSELVES (they simply refuse to admit they are wrong, or question their pet dogmas--current theories--just as Obama and the INSANE LEFT are doing on the political front). The science has to be fundamentally reconsidered, in accordance with the definitive evidence AGAINST the current consensus, BY NON-CLIMATE SCIENTISTS (and by non-academic scientists, as well, since the academics, as reactionary consensus followers, are both the critical, central part of the system and the deeper problem, across the board in science today). I don't think any part of the federal political system (Congress, the Supreme Court) can fix the situation represented by Obama. The states, and the people themselves, must do it. JUST SAY NO.

About Me

I am and have been for a long time a writer by profession. I have several books to my credit and my daily column, "Warning Signs", is disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites, as well as blogs. In addition, I am a longtime book reviewer and have a blog offering a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction.